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(c) Brian Hartley, (c) Moritz Freudenberg

For a long time in Ligia Lewis’s “choreographic composition” all lines point down. The seven performers slip, fall and hurl themselves to the floor, sometimes taking a run up, sometimes being pushed. They are reminiscent of accident victims and flies on a windscreen, of people who have been clubbed to death and, occasionally, of lovers and stumbling partygoers at the end of a night that has gone on far too long. In the words of the Old Testament Song of Songs: “Nigra sum sed Formosa” – “I am Black, but beautiful.” Ligia Lewis found this text inscribed on a Black Madonna. It inspired her to create an evening dedicated to those people history has left in the shadows. Black and queer people and those whose bodies are inconsistent with prevailing norms. Borrowing from the “complainte”, a form of French medieval lament, Lewis creates a score of movement and sound that enables us to experience with barely uninterrupted restlessness how these bodies come up against the power structures of the majority society. This is a richly associative evening, often surprising with dry humour and always retaining an element of mystery: one that feels things out patiently and is to be explored and questioned. Then, however, it worms its way into our minds with its headlong stasis and its silent rage.

Age: 16+
Language: no language skills required
Duration: approx. 1 hour and 30 minutes